It was her voice. Yet it was different. It was the voice of a woman.
“Kalispera, Stella.”
He heard her sudden intake of breath. “Theo—h-how did you—” She paused. “Never mind. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I have to admit that when I drove past your villa for old-time’s sake, I was surprised to discover you hadn’t aborted our baby after all.”
“Aborted?” she cried.
Just then Stella had sounded too aghast at his comment to have faked it. He clutched his phone tighter. Among Nikos Athas’s many sins, he’d coldbloodedly lied to Theo about Stella getting rid of the baby.
Sickened by the possibility that she’d really gone through with it and couldn’t face him with the truth, Theo had left for NewYork determined to start a new life and make the kind of money so his family would never know poverty again.
However, now that he was back home and had discovered he had a son, no power was going to keep Theo from him. If Nikos interfered again and tried to do his worst, it wouldn’t get him or her brother Stasio anywhere. Theo was more than prepared to fight fire with fire because he intended to be a full-time father to his child.
All these years he’d accused her in his heart of doing the worst thing a mother could do. He should have known she wouldn’t have done away with their child. It wasn’t in her nature. But for her to keep all knowledge of their son from him wounded him so deeply, he could hardly talk. His eyes smarted.
“What did you name him?”
There was a period of silence before she said, “I…I’m surprised you didn’t find that out since you seem to know everything else.” After another pause while he waited, she added, “He was christened Ari.”
He sucked in his breath. “Is that an Athas family name?”
“No. I just liked it,” she murmured.
Now that he knew that, he liked it, too. Very much, in fact. For the moment she was sounding like the old Stella.
In the past they’d been forced to speak quietly over the phone so her family wouldn’t know she was making plans with him. She hadn’t been allowed to start dating until she was eighteen, but she’d caught his eye before her seventeenth birthday. The thrill of falling in love had made both of them careless.
They’d slipped out at different times to be together. Theo had paid an old fisherman on a regular basis for the use of his wooden rowboat. There had been a protected cove on Salamis and he had always taken her there. They’d swim and then lie on a quilt spread on the sand. Theo knew he shouldn’t touch her, but he couldn’t help it, not when she begged him to make love to her.
She had been so giving, so utterly sweet and passionate while at the same time being so innocent, he had told her that if they waited until she turned eighteen, they’d get married and have a real church wedding. Though they’d tried to wait, there came a day when neither of them could stand it any longer. Once they’d made love, there was no going back.
He cleared his throat, intent on learning everything about his son. There were six years to catch up on. “If you could tell me the most important thing about him, what would it be?”
“I couldn’t pick just one thing.” Her voice shook. “He’s sweet, loving. I think he’s the smartest, kindest little boy in the world.”
That described the woman he’d once loved. She’d spoken like a mother who adored her son. Ari sounded the antithesis of his uncle Nikos who years before had caught up to Theo with his first volley of threats. “Stay away from my sister or you’ll live to regret it.”
Nikos had been watching them at church, following them while they went for walks. When his threats didn’t work, he had tried to bribe Theo with money. Theo had thrown it back in his face.
A week later there had been a small fire at his parents’ taverna. The police had said it was arson, but they never found the perpetrator. Someone working for Nikos had phoned with more threats, and Theo had been warned there was more to come if he didn’t leave Stella alone.
When Theo’s brother Spiro had been injured on his motor scooter by a luxury car driving way too fast for that time of night, Theo realized Nikos was in dead earnest.
The last time he ever saw Stella, she had told him she was pregnant. The news had overjoyed him and suddenly everything made sense. She’d been impregnated by a Pantheras. It was no wonder Nikos had behaved like a madman—Theo had violated his sister and there’d be hell to pay.
That night Theo had told her he wanted to marry her as soon as possible. They would go away and he’d get a good job to support her and the baby. They’d planned everything out and had decided to meet at the church in secret. But on the night in question, Nikos had been waiting for him in the church parking lot. He had told Theo that Stella wouldn’t be coming now or ever, that she had aborted their baby and wanted to forget all about Theo.
In shock Theo had lunged for him, but he had been beaten up by hired thugs and left for dead on the island of Salamis. After he had recovered from his injuries he’d looked everywhere for Stella, but no one had seen her. She didn’t answer his calls or letters. She’d simply vanished.
Eventually he came to the conclusion that she really didn’t want to see him again. It was evident her family had talked her into getting rid of the baby. His baby.
He shifted his weight. “I’ve been waiting all day for your call so we could discuss Ari. When I didn’t hear from you, I decided to phone you. Where and how would you like my first meeting with him to take place?”
“I’d rather it never happened in this lifetime or the next.”
A nerve throbbed at the corner of his mouth. “Then you’re saying you want this handled through the court?’
“No,” she blurted in agony. For a moment she reminded him of the vulnerable girl he had once known. “I have to know what you plan to do. Ari keeps a lot of things to himself. Naturally he’s frightened about things.”
“So am I,” his voice grated. “Do you have a sense of how he truly feels?”
A groan escaped her throat. “I wish I could tell you he despises the idea of you and would prefer you didn’t exist, but the truth is, I have no idea how he feels deep inside.”
In other words, Ari knew his mother hated Theo.
“Today he was probably reacting the way he did to please me. He always tries to please,” she explained. “Maybe more than is healthy at times.”
He had little doubt that Ari hated the man who’d fathered him and then had promptly rejected him even before he was born. A six-year-old could hate just as vehemently as a fiftyor an eighty year-old. Theo was under no illusion that this would be easy. In this case the hatred would be worse because Ari would have been indoctrinated by his uncles who’d wished Theo dead long ago.
He realized he needed to be prepared for hostility from Ari that might last a lifetime. A lot of factors would enter in, beginning with the atmosphere in which Ari
